[geos-devel] RFC 9: Restore C++ API as public API

[Greg Troxel]

lnkansa <lnkansa at gmail.com> writes:

> For the second time, this discussion has become very passionate at some
> point. That being said, I believe all the package management issues being
> used as an excuse are more of an issue for Linux-based systems. Those who
> develop Linux-based applications should know better if they depend on
> system wide library distribution for their dependencies via some package
> management. For them, they should have stability in mind when doing their
> development. Why should a larger community pay for the poor choice of
> others and would have to jump through additional hoops to achieve what
> should be trivial in C++? I am not a Linux expert/developer and would not
> be in a position to judge. Such applications could consider static linking
> as alternative or risk being dropped by the PACKAGE MANAGERS and those who
> want to make their work easier. It is the responsibility of statically
> linked application to fix security updates. I do acknowledge most of the
> PSC/maintainers primary OS might be linux and might have their own
> preferences/biases.

This is not about GNU/Linux vs other packaging systems.  It is about the
notion that it is normal and proper to use dynamic linking and only have
one copy of a library, such that it can be updated for security issues
without having to update large amounts of other things.

Part of the problem, perhaps most of it, is that programs written in C++
tend not have a stable ABI.  With a notion of ABI stability, I think
most of the objections would be less strong.